Aker H-6e Rigs on Discovery Channel

Friday, June 26, 2009

A major feat of engineering will be successfully concluded when, by the end of June, Aker Solutions hands over the second of two Aker H-6e drilling rigs to Aker Drilling. Building two of the world's most advanced drilling rigs, tailored to operate in harsh environments, extreme temperatures and in ultra-deep waters caught the attention of the Discovery Channel.

Discovery, the non-fiction media channel with hundreds of millions of subscribers around the world, selected the project to be part of its popular series "Mega Builders."

The TV channel will broadcast a 60 minute documentary about the Aker H-6e project in 24 European and Asian countries, bringing Aker Solutions' engineering and management expertise to its broadest-ever worldwide audience. The program is scheduled to be aired in Norway on Sunday 28 June at 22:00.

Jan Andersen, general manager for Discovery Networks Nordic, says the TV channel had a number of reasons for selecting this particular project to fill a whole one-hour episode of its very popular series, in a season consisting of only six shows.

"The main consideration was that the H-6e designs will be the largest mobile rigs in the world that are specifically designed to drill for oil under extreme conditions in very unforgiving environments. The story is also fascinating because construction happened in two very different locations - Norway and Dubai. What's more, the hulls were built in sections, which then had to be assembled, and we have never shown anything quite like that on Mega Builders."